Thursday, January 06, 2011

Q: Take a plural noun that ends with the letter S. Insert a space somewhere in this word, retaining the order of the letters. The result will be a two-word phrase that has the same meaning as the original word, except in the singular. What word is this?

Hmm... the first puzzle of the new year is usually easy. I would like to say I have it, but the answer currently eludes me. I'm positive I'll get it eventually.

Edit: Yes, I had the answer despite what I wrote. Here are my hints: "Easy" is an anagram of the answer. "I have it" is close to the phrase "the ayes have it". If you combine "say" with the "e" in eludes, you also get the letters in the answer. And "positive" was a hint to "yes" being a positive response.

52 comments:

Here's my standard reminder... don't post the answer or any outright spoilers before the deadline of Thursday at 3pm ET. If you know the answer, click the link and submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here. Thank you.

This puzzle has been nagging at me for days. I couldn't understand how splitting a plural noun into two words made it singular. My heart throb didn't get it either. Although I have the answer now, I have to give myself a low grade.

Jan, I'm sure you noticed that Bayer, Sayer and prayer all contain the letters of the word "year", although that observation got me nowhere. Perhaps Tommy Boy's latest post that suggests a medical condition will prove helpful. But so far, no luck

OK, I finally have a possible answer that is consistent with Blaine's clues. However, it has nothing to do with holiday seasons, religion, years, tenses, medical conditions (or disgraced naval officers). And it assumes a broad interpretation of the phrase "has the same meaning as." If valid, the same technique could lead to other possible answers.

Thank you, Lorenzo. I finally got it! Great clues that I now understand since I got the answer. I don't want to plagiarize any of them, but how about Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton and The Who for musical clues.

My immediate thought after reading the puzzle was that the word must begin with a singular article like "the" or "a". Unfortunately, I abandoned this approach prematurely (duh!). My next idea was to split the plural word immediately before the "s". This led to several possibilities in which the plural word represented a category and the singular word a specific example of something in the category. (Not exactly what the puzzle asked for, but I'v grown accustomed to occasional ambiguity in the puzzle wording!) I submitted "models" and "Model S" (the new electric car from Tesla Motors).

I came up with headaches from the clues given here (nagging, pounding, throbbing, aspirin, etc.), but it never occurred to me that headaches (or heartaches or earaches) is the correct answer. I think that ayes is a much better answer, but we'll have to wait to hear from Will for the definitive answer.

I'm not sure why "ayes" is better than "headaches". The plural noun "headaches" split into two words is the singular noun "head" and the verb "aches". If "A yes" can be a two-word phrase, couldn't "head aches" be considered as well? Unless I missed something in the original puzzle, I believe this one was too ambiguous.